I scanned the article and I agree with most of the conclusions. I believe that without some means to get around the speed of light as a speed limit that interstellar manned space flight will only be attempted in the form of generation ships serving as life boats if and/or when the earth for whatever reason(s) becomes uninhabitable.

If mankind discovers or invents some form of FTL travel then all we will need is the will to travel to the stars.
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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Possibly the man performing the interview is associated with Serendip, only what I am able to hear from the interview.

But the interview is not going very well. Apparently some patience is needed.

If astronomers do not always agree, how then when it comes to the relationship between astronomers and astronauts (people who have had the opportunity at visiting space and making personal experiences from such trips)?

If anything more than the earth and and the moon was ever visible in the heavens they were visiting (besides the stars), probably blame the observers psychological mind.

One very important factor missing from that article and that for such a journey to happen then some form of artificial gravity will be needed as the human body deteriorates in anything less than standard gravity with zero gravity being the worst (ie; loss of blood, muscle and bone mass).

Which is why I question all these sci-fi stories using stasis for long journeys, although .....

Stasis (fiction) implies, especially in science-fiction, an artificial pause that stops all physical and chemical processes, including those of life; they resume as if uninterrupted as soon as the stasis is ended.

Which is why I question all these sci-fi stories using stasis for long journeys, although .....

Stasis (fiction) implies, especially in science-fiction, an artificial pause that stops all physical and chemical processes, including those of life; they resume as if uninterrupted as soon as the stasis is ended.

I have brought this up before but whenever a thread about interstellar space travel gets going it bears repeating. Interstellar space travel as depicted in most Sci-Fi movies and TV shows totally ignores space/time. Leaving earth and travelling to, say, Vega might only take from a few hours to a few days depending on the type of propulsion used but time here on earth will have passed at a different rate and upon returning the voyager will have aged say a month or a year but depending on how far he travelled earth will be many years older. So two way travel to the stars may never be a reality
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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I have brought this up before but whenever a thread about interstellar space travel gets going it bears repeating. Interstellar space travel as depicted in most Sci-Fi movies and TV shows totally ignores space/time. Leaving earth and travelling to, say, Vega might only take from a few hours to a few days depending on the type of propulsion used but time here on earth will have passed at a different rate and upon returning the voyager will have aged say a month or a year but depending on how far he travelled earth will be many years older. So two way travel to the stars may never be a reality

Two way travel is still possible, of course, though you may be greeted by your aging great-great-great grandson upon your return...which might be a problem for some.

Another consequence, life on Earth will continue to evolve, including the Sciences. Just look where recording media has gone in the last 25-35 years, from reel-to-reel, 8-track, cassette tapes to Blue-Ray DVD's.

Space travellers will almost certainly be 'locked-in' to the science they took with them when they departed. They may hear of new developments happening back on Earth somehow, but how could they fashion/manufacture anything new?? That's where a Robbie Robot would come in real handy, but he/it doesn't exist, AFAIK. :)

How do you come to the conclusion that interstellar travel makes you old in the meantime?

Definitely, if I had the opportunity at traveling to another star, I would choose to travel with the fastest speed possible, meaning the speed of light.

But as Lint trap correctly concludes, or at least assumes, if I said goodbye to my parents when departing in the space ship bound for Vega, I would come back home and possibly would have to visit my parents graves, if I was happy to locate their place of burial at all.

If you should be so happy to be able to travel somewhere else by the speed of light, how do you assume that such a journey involves time travel at all? Isn't such a journey bound or destined for Vega assumed to take 26 years one way and another 26 years the other way. My parents definitely do not live forever. Not me, either.

Anyway, I returned from my fictional journey maybe two weeks older. My parents were gone a long time ago.

But if I for some reason went down into a wormhole, I possibly could return back and greet my parents as being only children. You can only travel one way in time, namely back since time stops up when you are traveling at a speed approaching light speed. In any case, the speed of light itself can not be obtained, the energy needed for a particular mass in order to obtain the speed of light would not become attainable.

Space travellers will almost certainly be 'locked-in' to the science they took with them when they departed. They may hear of new developments happening back on Earth somehow, but how could they fashion/manufacture anything new?? That's where a Robbie Robot would come in real handy, but he/it doesn't exist, AFAIK. :)

Lt

it remembers me in some Sci-Fy Tv shows where some humans gone in generations-boats werent arrived yet to their destinations while 100-200 years later humans travel with new technology they discovered since the boats gone... arriving at destinations way ahead before the boats ^^
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Yes. Why is time always being associated with the speed of light and the possible barrier even this speed implies?

I wrote "if I was happy to locate their place of burial at all" here previously.

I rather could have said "able" instead of "happy", but so it goes.

But there is generally thought you may only be able to travel back in time.

What if you did so and wanted to return back to the present time?

For this to happen it means that have to travel forward in time in order to be able to catch yourself again.

Time travel is not pure science fiction. It is a proven fact.

A couple of years ago, two very exact atomic clocks were brought on two different planes and traveled the opposite ways the whole globe around.

When arriving back at were they departed, both these atomic clocks were compared with a third clock which had been stationary all the time. It was found that the time being shown for the two clocks which had been on a journey were showing a different time than the stationary one.

Whether both clocks differed from the third one equally much, I really don't know. But in any case there was a time difference or discrepancy noted in this example.

I guess it's because it's fundamental in the current theories like relativity that time, distance and the speed of light are all tied together in such a way that prevents our disassociating them from each other.
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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I think interstellar travel may be a myth. When we look at the most energetic events in the univerwse, supernova, what we see follows Einstein's laws. When we crash protons into eachother, the particles flying out follow Einstein's laws. If everything we observe at these very high energy levels seems to follow Einsteins laws, then those laws become the governing principle of just how fast a ship can travel, and how much energy it would take to accelerate it there.

Wormholes are the size of atoms if they exist, and I'm not sure one could count on them as stable. I can't imagine the first ship deciding to plunge head long into something the size of an atom, and without knowing where you would end up.

Also without some solid evidence of what is there, why would any ship expend these huge quantities of energy and just head off into the sunset like Star Trek? To me it makes much more sence to know where you are going, and have a suitable way to get back.

Yes, travel at near the speed of light is possible, but even still the distances of even just 1 star away are enormous. With our nearest star, the shortest possible trip would be 8 years, with no time to stay and visit. If a ship was going to spend 4 years just traveling from one star to another, then one would think they would be planning on staying for a while. Also you would think they would need some way to refuel.

I did see a design concept of a ship about the size of the moon once. It had a huge, what looked like a satelite dish in front of it. It's purpose was to scoop up free hydrogen atoms from space, where there is about 1 hydrogen atom in an area the size of a grape fruit, and crash them together in a fusion reactor. That ship could have obtained about 80 something % of the speed of light. That would be an example of constant refueling, but the size required would be a lot of resources for anyone to build.

Space travellers will almost certainly be 'locked-in' to the science they took with them when they departed. They may hear of new developments happening back on Earth somehow, but how could they fashion/manufacture anything new?? That's where a Robbie Robot would come in real handy, but he/it doesn't exist, AFAIK. :)

it remembers me in some Sci-Fy Tv shows where some humans gone in generations-boats werent arrived yet to their destinations while 100-200 years later humans travel with new technology they discovered since the boats gone... arriving at destinations way ahead before the boats ^^

That sounds like the Star Trek TOS episode and later film with Kahn and his merry band of explorers...

We may seem bound by physics as we currently understand it, but it appears unlikely that our current understanding will be the last word forever on the nature of the universe and what can be done in it. There are a number of hints that there might be ways to work around the light speed barrier, given sufficient technological advancement. There have already been quite serious scientific discussions about how space might be warped around a vessel, in effect, moving space rather than ship. Also considered are 'shortcuts' from point A to point B in our local space-time framework that might be made through domains not affected by the usual relativistic limitations. Michael

I too have heard many times that our technology still has a long way to go. What concerns me is that by looking at the most energetic events in the universe, supernova, and proton crashes, there doesn't seem to be evidence to support it. If evidence is not shown in the enormous amount of energy released in a supernova, which is capable of making most of the periodic table, then where would you look for such evidence. We have looked at the universe in all wave lengths. From radio, to infrared, to visible light, to ultraviolet, microwaves, and gamma rays. The spectrum is only so large, and when making observations across the band, and not seeing evidence, it does make one wonder a bit.

I'm not saying more discoveries won't be made, but they will be made within the bounds of the observable, testable framework present through out the universe.

This is just my opinion.

If physical laws exist on earth, then it must be the same way on the moon, or on other stars, or anywhere, or visa-versa.